


Lay Anchor

by doublejoint



Series: peachtober 2020 [27]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Aging, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:53:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: "Are you thinking of settling down?"
Relationships: Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks/Dracule Mihawk
Series: peachtober 2020 [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953295
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Lay Anchor

**Author's Note:**

> #peachtober day 27: orchard
> 
> i want them to retire together, i just think it would be cute

They lay anchor two islands away from Shanks’s hometown in West Blue. Forty, twenty, five years ago, they would have kept going, but they’re old enough not to want to keep going today and young enough to have enough faith in tomorrow to stop. They’re low on cash, and Shanks always reminds Mihawk that he’s a pirate and pirates don’t have to pay, but--Mihawk had only ever been a pirate in name only, only in it for the swords and free passage in the sea, never really taken to the sea with a crew amassing treasure.

(“You still count,” Shanks says sometimes when he’s drunk, the words slurring in a way he’d have never let himself do when he was young, when he’d had a crew himself, but he’s speaking more to himself here than to Mihawk--but Shanks, on land, weaponless, crewless, is still much more of a pirate than Mihawk ever was.)

No one notices them in the back of the dingy tavern, even with Mihawk’s sword on his back and his feet up on the table. All the kid pirates these days are getting more and more ostentatious, decked out in gold and silver and neon colors that sear themselves into the eyes, as if they’re all trying to be the flashiest, win by outrageousness, and it’s the luxury of the old to have the young’s eyes skip over them and skid away, for whatever that’s worth. Mihawk would take the speed and stamina of his youth over that, but he hasn’t been given the choice. (Then again, he’s never just taken what he could get.)

Somehow, though, Shanks manages to engage a group of young pirates in a conversation, challenges them to an arm-wrestling match and loses, resulting in the rest of the cash being spent on a round of drinks. 

“Your parents are farmers? He used to be a farmer,” Shanks says, clapping Mihawk on the shoulder.

Mihawk is about to take a sip of his drink; instead, he drains the rest of it, hoping that the conversation will shift as the kids get bored, but instead, they’re all looking at him now.

“That was a long time ago, and very brief.”

“And then you became a pirate?”

“More or less,” says Mihawk, already beginning to regret the lack of ale in his cup.

That seems to disappoint the kids enough, and they return to badgering Shanks about the best places to recruit crew members in the area and the best towns for entertainment, information that he gives happily but that Mihawk is sure is at least fifty years out of date, if Shanks remembers it accurately at all.

* * *

They may have both lost steps, but they can still fight; they still do fight even when they don’t have to. They can still go where they please, more or less, if more slowly and deliberately, out of the way, sailing through inland rivers and back passages of ocean cobbled together from maps and navigator contacts. They may be older than they were, but Mihawk at least doesn’t feel like a relic of some bygone era, though he may as well be one. Titles and reputations change so quickly these days, but theirs are remembered, if left in another time. People don’t place their faces to the names and wanted posters; they’re too busy looking for the local bigshots or the next generation. Mihawk’s not too caught up with that, not preoccupied with the people they’d once been, but it’s difficult not to think of it sometimes.

“You think we could have made it in this pirate age?” Shanks says, only mostly joking.

They’d have made it in any age; that’s obvious. “We’d stick out,” says Mihawk.

“I don’t know,” says Shanks. “You were pretty ridiculous back in the day.”

He’s toeing Mihawk’s boot with his sandal. Mihawk pulls his hat down over his eyes. 

*

Shanks’s hair is still an orchard, all crimson, falling messy around his face; he still smells like the sea and dry white wine, still drapes himself all over Mihawk when he gets the chance, without any regard to whether Mihawk’s busy or not, because whatever he’s about to say or do has to be more important than what Mihawk’s busied himself with it (it is, more often than Mihawk will admit). He’s still a better sailor than Mihawk, and Mihawk is still the superior swordsman. 

“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Shanks says. 

He’s using his hand to shield the sun from his eyes, the way he used to do when he still wore the straw hat but forgot he’d had it tied around his neck, perhaps not consciously illustrating his point, but Mihawk still smiles. 

It’s nice being the same height, more or less; he doesn’t have to bend or stretch to kiss Shanks. Their bodies fit together like they’d come from the same set, not perfectly standardized, but close enough that there’s no question of compatibility. (It’s still easier when Shanks isn’t wearing a hat, easier still when Mihawk isn’t either, but the sun doesn’t forgive his skin the way it does with Shanks and it never has).

* * *

“Do you ever think about going back to farming?”

“Not really.” A cloud covers the moon, and Mihawk shifts closer to Shanks. “Why?”

“Dunno.”

“Are you thinking of settling down?”

The concept of Shanks on the shore, farming or tending a bar, staying in one place, is alien; it’s like the moon hanging in one phase, fixed in the sky all day and all night. Mihawk doesn’t mind staying in one place, but doing that with Shanks--it’s too strange to think about.

Shanks laughs. “Did you seriously think that?”

“No,” says Mihawk.

Shanks makes a satisfied noise in his throat. Mihawk looks away from him, and Shanks kisses his neck. The waves lap against their boat, quietly as if respecting the darkness. Shanks’s stubble scrapes against Mihawk’s skin, and Mihawk adjusts his shoulder so that Shanks’s face is against his shirt instead. 


End file.
